Origin of a Serial Killer: An Overview
by Wildcard999
Summary: Terry McGinnis is nice guy. He helps out his mother. He watches his little brother. He busts his butt nightly to keep Gotham safe. But what happens when you push a nice guy to his breaking point, and beyond?


You will find crossovers in many of my submissions. You will also find many OCs and AU versions of superheroes. These characters are not developed for the stories, the stories are developed for them. If any of these characters offend or scare you in any way, blame them; they tell me who they are, I merely write it all down.

Okay, this is not a 'story'. Just the general backstory on the Terry McGinnis for my two successive posts. I have (currently) 11 versions of Terry McGinnis alone, so I will identify all versions at the beginning of the story. Each version has his own 'designation' and will remain constant in all stories.

Special thanks to all Heromorph members who doused me in accolades and to OCP for inspiring me to finish.

Characters:  
Terry McGinnis-Batman from Batman Beyond  
Copycat-an evil shapeshifter; original character

Also various other characters with minor parts.

An evil shapeshifter, known as Copycat, has perpetrated a plethora of crimes; her favorite being the kidnapping and torture of young, attractive, male superheroes.

One night, circa 2045, Copycat came to New Gotham City. She was in the middle of committing a murder, when Batman interjected, attempting to save the man. He only succeeded in becoming her latest victim.

Copycat held him for two weeks, injuring him in every way imaginable, taunting him all the while. She broke his bones, stabbed him, shot him; even removed body parts. However, with her shapeshifting power, she was able to repair everything she did before it killed him. After all, inflicting pain was the whole point, and his pain was limitless.

When he was finally rescued by police he was a mess. For the next six months he tried to go back to his life. He tried to do school, but couldn't concentrate. He tried to keep his friends, but couldn't talk to them. Even Dana gave up eventually. Batman was all he had of his former life, and that too suffered horribly.

However, a turning point was soon to come; a day that would change his life as drastically as the day of his kidnapping. The day of his class field trip.

It was a morning like any other, but on this day, Terry's class piled into a school bus and headed to the Museum of Computer Science. The museum had just gotten some new pieces, on loan from Q-Tech, and Terry's class was going to see them.

Field trips, or anything else school related, didn't really capture Terry's attention anymore. So he snuck off on his own. He followed a suspicious looking man to an 'employees only' section of the building and hid in a storage closet. There, he found a small dome shaped device which attacked him. He passed out soon after.

When he woke up again, there was no evidence of the device or what it did to him; like he'd imagined it. Not really knowing one way or the other, Terry decided to go home and forget the whole thing. If something happened later, he'd deal with it then. Little did he know, the device did not actually attack him. It attached itself to his skull. Cloaked, it incorporated itself into his biology, like a parasite. In fact, it _was_ a parasite. He was its new energy source. And _it_ was _his_ new guardian angel.

After the museum, things were pretty normal for a few weeks. Then, some lowlife caught him off guard. Being in the suit, Terry wasn't usually afraid, but guns still scared the crp out of him. It was Copycat's weapon of choice. It also happened to be what Barry Milnan brought to rob the jewelry store with. With Batman petrified, Barry saw an opening and took it; he killed Batman. And wouldn't you know it; Terry awoke hours later, in the cave with only some blood soaked bandages as proof.

Terry was still in denial though; he wanted to pretend everything was fine; normal. He'd gotten good at not thinking about the things he didn't want to think about. So it took a while to notice there was anything different about himself. Everything was passed off as coincidence or his imagination. In reality, the device that was attached to him was reworking his physiology to improve efficiency and sped recovery when necessary. No one knew it, but Batman had become invincible.

Terry may not have been paying attention, but Bruce Wayne was. He noticed Terry was taking less and less time to recover from serious injuries. Not to mention how fast he'd become. This worried him because of the incredible level of violence Terry had displayed since his return. Wayne had given him a lot of leeway; understanding the ordeal Terry had gone though, but Terry wasn't getting better. He was getting worse. Combine that anger with super human power; it's a recipe for disaster. Unbeknownst to Terry, Bruce was already taking steps to ensure that if Batman went bad, he would not stand unopposed.

About eight months after his rescue, Batman claimed his first victim. It was an accident; he hit a suspected kidnapper a few too many times. He was gone before the police arrived, but Wayne still believed Terry should turn himself in. Murder was just too far. Terry didn't think he really did anything wrong, and he liked the feeling of power he got from taking that man's life.

After destroying the kill switch, and most of the cave, Terry was completely solo. According to him, Batman was still a super_hero_, rescuing people from criminals. By beating them so severely the perpetrators ended their nights in the ICU or the morgue. According to Commissioner Gordon, he was a menace; a monster that needed to be stopped. However you looked at it, Batman was out for blood, and a lot of people were going to die.

It took almost an entire month to make enough repairs to the cave to use the suit's kill switch. By then Batman had murdered a total of thirteen people, and hospitalized many, many more. Gordon had tried everything to find Batman, even coordinating her efforts with the Justice League, but he always disappeared before anyone got there. With the kill switch functional again, Bruce hoped it would be enough to bring him down. Paralyzing the suit, however, was not enough. Batman was stalled long enough for half the League to arrive, but by then, Terry was out of the suit and ripped Superman to shreds. Horrified, Terry blamed Bruce and murdered him too.

With the death of Superman, Terry realized his power, and believed he could now, finally, take down the person who started it all. Copycat. To this day, it remains unknown how he did it, but Terry left his timeline in pursuit of his nemesis, and the multiverse's most notorious criminal.

The difficulty with tracking this particular kind of shapeshifter is how few differences there are between her and the people she imitates. Unable to tell when he was facing her or someone she copied, Terry decided to err on the side of caution and just kill anyone he thought might be her. Originally, he truly thought he was done with his quest every time 'Copycat' died. He kept an eye out though, to make sure. After a time, always finding a new 'Copycat' to savage, his growing paranoia and deepening insanity led him to believe that she could come back from the dead, as he could. So Terry McGinnis set out to travel the multiverse, murdering Copycat until she stayed dead.


End file.
